


Comeback

by damalur



Category: Captain Marvel (Marvel), Marvel, Marvel 616, Spider-Woman (Comic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Buddy Action Romance, F/F, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 06:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2141373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oh, it does <i>wonders</i> for Jessica's anxiety when her sort-of ex decides to cope with laser-guided amnesia by kidnapping her for a mysterious road trip. (Way to be a team player, <i>Carol</i>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comeback

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moriann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moriann/gifts).



> Hey hey, moriann! This doesn't specifically fit any of the prompts you gave me, but I read the bit where you mentioned that you liked road trips and couldn't resist. Hope it fits the spirit of what you wanted, if not the letter. :)
> 
> Many thanks to my beta, who would probably never use punching a dinosaur as an excuse to bail on our coffee date!

Carol's car was a '67 Mazda Cosmo, restored, updated, and painted the brightest, most offensive red on the color wheel. Jessica couldn't have generated any of this information on her own; she knew nothing about cars, and cared about them less than she knew about them, but Carol liked to talk loudly and often about the Cosmo. 

Apparently, even the loss of memory couldn't dampen her enthusiasm.

"You know what I think?" Carol said. She was behind the wheel of the vehicle, hands at ten and two, hair whipping around her face as they did eighty down the highway. Which was legal. Probably.

"What?" Jess shouted back.

"I think you like hot cars as much as I do!"

"That is an utter load of bull—"

"Oh yeah?" Carol said. 

"Yes. Absolutely. Are you sure you should be driving?" Jess extracted a piece of hair from her mouth, spitting out the ends and making a face. "Are you sure you _remember_ how to drive?"

"I remember lots of things." Oh, Carol was starting to get grouchy now. "I remember how to drive, how to brush my teeth, how to beat your ass at poker—"

"But not why I might find this car objectionable," Jessica pointed out.

"Yeah, well...no, maybe not that."

"I still don't understand how going on a roadtrip with your ex-girlfriend is going to help you in any way," Jess said. "At all. Ever."

Carol smirked at her and said, "Hey, it's not like it's going to _hurt."_

-

But it would—hurt, that is.

Jess was officially on leave from her position as a field operative with a very large, very powerful organization that preferred not to be named. Unofficially, her director had instructed her to "take some time off" because "we all know you're rattled by what happened to Danvers."

Jessica _hated_ that everyone knew, hated having a weakness on display like that. Of course, her shit life couldn't cut her a shit break by at least letting everyone pretend she was over Carol. They were supposed to have reached that equilibrium that good, decent people reached after mutual break-ups, the point where they could be friends and occasional coworkers without any awkwardness or anger on either side. Unfortunately, it was clear—to everyone else, if not to Carol—that Jess still had certain 'hang-ups' that were preventing her from 'moving on.'

And then: the accident, several fraught weeks in the hospital followed by several fraught weeks of outpatient care, therapy, recovery, the honk of a car waking her from her first restful night in months. She'd flung back the covers and opened to door of her balcony to find Carol waiting on the street below, leaning against the Cosmo with a cocky attitude written across her face. Jessica was appalled by that smirk. She was _repulsed_ by it. She was also really irrefutably attracted to it, which was, to be frank, the root of many of her problems.

She had a hard time saying no. She also had an undeniable habit of being drawn to precisely the things that were worst for her. And here came Carol Danvers—

-

They were at a diner. It was two in the morning. The only other people present were the waiter (tired, strained, attempted to be friendly but not exactly pulling it off), the cook (hidden from view by the swinging kitchen door), and a pair of off-duty detectives (if Jessica knew how to ID law enforcement, and she did).

Carol was on her third mug of coffee. "Ugh, this stuff is fantastic," she was saying. "I'm not claiming a triple-shot mocha with whip isn't delicious every now and then, but it's hard to beat diner coffee."

"It tastes like black sludge," said Jess, who was also on her third cup. "Drinking this is like staring into a void."

"I just want my bacon, is that too much to ask?" Carol said. She ate like she drove, like she flew, like she loved—with vigor, intensity, and carefree abandon. This was, presumably, why it was taking so long to prepare their order; the cook had probably run out of eggs making the behemoth omelet she wanted. Jessica had ordered pecan pancakes and would under threat of torture admit to being pretty ravenous herself.

"Yes," Jess said. "Yes, it is too much to ask, just like 'What are we doing' and 'Where are we going.'"

"Still not telling you." Carol pulled her hair over her shoulder; it was starting to get long again, although it wasn't as thick as it had been before medics had chopped the burned ends away.

"Come on, Danvers! You can't hold out on me forever—"

"Are you trying to bribe me?" Carol grinned. "If you are, then I have good news for you—I am definitely willing to be bribed."

Jess narrowed her eyes. "You're thinking something filthy right now, aren't you?"

"...No."

"Oh god, that means you are. We're in _public!_ And we broke up _last year!"_

The grin, already shark-like in its display of teeth, widened.

"No," said Jessica, very firmly. "Absolutely not. And stop _looking_ at me."

-

It turned out their destination was Illinois, more specifically Chicago, more specifically the Field Museum.

"Why are we here?" Jess hissed. Carol was pressed up against the side of the building; she had a dark stocking cap pulled over her hair and was peering around the corner at what was probably more of the same: lawn, intermittent floodlights, darkness, squirrels.

"Shh," said Carol. "You have your lockpicks, right? I found a side-entrance."

"Oh Christ, are we breaking into a museum? You aren't going to steal anything, are you? Please tell me you aren't going to steal anything."

"I'm not going to steal anything," Carol said.

Two hours and one disabled security system later (Jess was beginning to suspect that she'd been hijacked for this trip not because of her sentimental value but because of her skill set), Carol was staring at the dinosaur in a way that was downright alarming.

"Jess," she said, "meet Sue. Sue, meet Jess."

"Hi," Jess said. "Pleasure. Carol, _what the hell are we doing here."_

Carol looked up from her business with the harness and the big coil of rope she'd brought with her. "What?" she said. "Oh, hold this." And then she handed Jess a camera. 

"I'm going over here," Jess said, "to look at the beavers. You just...call me when you need me."

It was only about fifteen minutes until Carol took her up on that offer. "Jess!" she hollered, in a way that was probably not conducive to remaining undetected. "Jessica?"

"Coming!" Jess said, and emerged into the atrium to find Carol dangling from the ceiling a few feet from Sue's massive head.

"Okay," Carol called down, "I'm going to hold this as long as I can, make sure you get at least one good shot!" And then she yanked on the rigging, pulled back her arm, and grimaced.

Jess would give her one thing—when the picture came out, it really did look like Carol was punching the dinosaur.

-

"And _that's_ why we drove halfway across the country?" Jessica demanded the next morning. "So we could break into a museum and take a picture of you _pretending to punch a dinosaur?"_

Carol screwed the cap back on the Cosmo's gas tank and pursed her lips. "It seemed like a good idea at the time?" she offered.

"Could we have done that during visiting hours? Or not at all? Or maybe with some information, as in you telling me where we were going! Couldn't you have—" Jess cut herself off hard, slamming her mouth shut and ducking into the car to deposit her coffee in the cup holder. Carol, out of necessity, had had the entire interior gutted and rebuilt, and now there was just enough room to squeeze a very small drink into the center console.

"What?" Carol said. "Couldn't we have _what?"_

"Couldn't you have, well…"

"Because I don't know if you've thought about this from my point of view, but all of the sudden I woke up one morning with no clue who I am or what I'm doing, and I try to slide back into my old life and some of it makes sense and some of it I just can't understand, and then there's— _you_."

"Me," said Jess.

"Yeah, well." Carol shoved her hands into the pockets of her bomber jacket. "Why did we break up, anyway? Because nobody seems willing to give me a straight answer."

Jessica's mouth shaped the words numbly, without any connection to her will. "You thought you needed to find yourself," she said.

"'Find myself'?" Carol echoed, and then she burst into laughter.

Jess, who would not have chosen to have this conversation in the middle of a service station parking lot, eyed her skeptically. "Are you crazy?" she said. "Seriously, did you finally lose it? This isn't the head injury, is it?"

Carol had put her head down against the roof of the car; her shoulders were shaking. "No," she said, voice muffled by the arm she was braced against. She looked up, still grinning wildly. "No, not crazy. Jess—I have even less of an idea who I am now than I did then, but the one thing I'm even more sure of is you."

"Me," Jessica said again. She tried not to smile, she really did, but it was hard to resist the gleeful, self-directed amusement on Carol's face. "This is a really bad idea," she added.

"Oh yeah?"

"It's terrible. We're going to end in total disaster. Flames and...and explosions and…"

"Screaming?" Carol said.

"Screaming, definitely. But there is one thing you won't have to worry about." Carol was very close now; she and Jess were almost of a height, and Jessica had only to tilt her head a fraction of an inch to brush her lips against Carol's.

And Carol, as she always did, smelled like gasoline.

"What's that?"

"I know who you are," Jess said. "You're a hotshot Air Force pilot with no concept of the speed limit, a total disregard for your own safety, zero understanding of why it's a stupid idea to—"

"But what are my _bad_ qualities?" Carol interrupted. She reached out, tucked Jessica's hair behind her ear, and said, "Anyway, what does that make you?"

"Unlucky," Jess declared, and then she tilted her head that fraction and took the kiss she wanted.

-

Later—much later, when everyone was back on active duty and toothbrushes had started to migrate between apartments—she borrowed Carol's car when hers was in the shop. It was in the same impeccable shape it always was, with the exception of the new addition to the dashboard. Just below the passenger's line of sight was a photograph, off-center and a little blurry. If you squinted, you could just make out the triumphant determination on Carol's face as she swung at Sue's head.

"Oh _god,"_ Jessica groaned, and put the car in gear.


End file.
